


Open Windows

by EllyAvon



Series: Love is Not a Game (Or: The Tennis Metaphor Has Consequences) [3]
Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Feels, Coulson Sass, Deaf Clint Barton, Infamous Tennis Metaphor, M/M, Panic Attacks, Phil makes lists, Snuggling, The Triskelion is a Fire Hazard, feeeeeeeelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4681484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllyAvon/pseuds/EllyAvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long day and a long life leads Clint to have a small panic attack.  And then there are feelings. And then there is kissing.</p><p>This might make sense on its own, but I suggest you go back and read the first two in the series for maximum excellence :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Windows

**Author's Note:**

> Vague and clinical discussions of abuse of many kinds, Coulson maybe making sketchy decisions (your mileage on that may vary), but please be kind to yourself with regard to your own comfort levels.

"Do you ever wish we could sleep with the goddamn windows open?" Clint asked, his breathing coming hot and harsh. He's sitting on the side of the bed with his head down further between his knees than should be possible for a man his size. A bead of sweat rolls backward from his well-muscled shoulder down his neck and into the spiky mess of his hair.

It's about 2300 hours, and Phil Coulson is tucked in to the other side of the bed. Clint's chest rises and falls with an intensity usually reserved for that special moment they realize there’s heavy artillery aimed in their general direction. Actually, that's not true. Barton is almost worryingly comfortable under fire. Rocket launchers? Meh. Sleeping after the world's longest day in Senior Agent quarters? Panic attack. Phil knows Clint would be the first to admit he doesn't make a lot of sense on his best days.

The strangeness of it is terrifying. He tries to imagine, if watching is scary, how confusing and upsetting it must be for Clint. This isn't his normal method of coping with stress-- usually his coping skills seem to amount to hitting increasingly unlikely targets on the range and nope-ing out of any kind of serious relationship.

Phil reaches out and runs his hand down the trembling curve of Clint’s back. Like many things about Clint, his back is equal parts horror and beauty. Like Phil’s, his body is covered in scars that tell stories and keep secrets. He gently thumbs the knife slash on Clint’s right shoulder, remembering the op in Novosibirsk where Clint had held position in his nest and made the kill-shot with the full knowledge he was about to be sliced by an angry Russian gangster. He is a brave and stubborn man who is also slightly insane. Phil can’t get too hung up about that, he’s utterly gone for this man, so what does that make him?

“We can go outside, if that will help,” Phil says quietly, and Clint shakes his head.

He’s been having trouble sleeping. Phil knows this is unusual for him, too. Clint works hard and plays hard. He spends two hours every day with his bow, at least 90 minutes at the gym, and takes up most of the rest of his life playing spy. Phil has gathered over the years (because he can play spy, too, he will out-spy Bond himself, if need be. MI6 won’t know what hit them) that for Clint this means climbing into drop ceilings and air vents, wandering the city talking to strangers and asking to pet their dogs, and making friends with varied rooftops. He spends almost no time in front of screens, avoids caffeine like it might kill him, and sleeps at the same time every night he's not on an op. In short, he has astoundingly good sleep hygiene. It's unsurprising that at the end of each day, he pops out his hearing aid, puts his ridiculous blond head on a pillow and is asleep in seconds. Phil’s seen it happen many times, and it has never failed to impress him.

Or that's how it had been, before Paris.

They've been sharing a bed, since that horrifying night when Clint had gone into psychogenic shock for reasons unknown.

Phil feels like he has to categorize the reason as unknown, since Clint has yet to verbalize what really happened, if he even knows himself. However, Coulon has a precise list of the possible reasons his best asset went into shock after his first (Only. Coulson is pretty sure that even though the mission was an incredible success, it should be his only) honeypot op. Coulson likes lists, so the factors leading up to and including Agent Barton’s psychogenic shock according to Coulson are:

  1. Physical abuse as well as neglect during formative years. (See: Ms. Mabel Jenson’s 2nd Grade Notations, Agent Barton, C.F., recruitment file, item A534i)
  2. Removal from normative socialization, stability, and education at age 10 (Carson’s Travelling Carnival of Wonders, notably not a school of any kind, and probably not even a very good circus without Clint in literally half of their acts) as well as 2A: Potential abuse of unknown variety indicated by development of decidedly non-circus skills including grappling, surveillance and use of non-traditional weapons. (How does an 18-year-old become a master archer and learn how to throw knives with alarming accuracy? Supposition: he has to.)
  3. Rumors of unsuccessful romantic attachments during early tenure at SHIELD. (Noted: yearlong relationship with Agent Emily Tan, rumored to have ended due to lack of commitment on the part of Agent Barton.)
  4. Pre-Mission Briefing PA-8734-AB, in which Agent Barton describes sex as a game. (Specifically Tennis, for reasons unknown.)
  5. Events of Operation Missile Defense Four, in which Agent Barton posed as a sex worker in order to obtain information from Commandant Luc Etienne Pointeax. (A feat executed with a level of brutal, chilling efficiency that a robot wielding a scalpel couldn’t accomplish in its wildest electric dreams.)
  6. Post-Mission Health Check, in which Handler, Agent Phillip Coulson notes all injuries sustained during action (see: Health Log of Barton, C. F., PA-8734-POH), and provides rudimentary first aid (The notation and treatment of injuries involved physical contact between Agent Barton and Agent Coulson.)
  7. Medical Event PA-8734-M; Onset of psychogenic shock, (treated with an auto-injection of 0.03 mL of epinephrine, elevation of both legs above heart level, blankets, and a healthy dose of terror/incompetence from Handler, Agent Phillip Coulson.)



The problem with the list is that Phil isn’t sure whether he has those last two things in the right order, or if the transition between items 5 and 6 was what caused it.

And this evening, he’s honestly not sure what to lean towards, because the current incident began with the benign the act of agreeing that they’re both utterly exhausted, sweeping their perimeter, stripping into their underclothes and tucking themselves into Phil’s full-size bed slotted together like spoons in a drawer. Much like many other nights have gone for the past month or so.

Phil had expected Clint to keep with tradition for an extremely exhausting day and slip easily into sleep. He himself expects to be awake a little longer, he’s still got the buzz of today’s firefight in his head.

The exhaustion is thanks, in no small part, to the small contingency of terrorists who thought they could actually _storm the Triskelion_ at _dinnertime._ Which was equal parts adorable and horrifying. Or at least, the carnage was horrifying. Since everyone who works and lives in the Triskellion down to the last janitor knows how to handle a sidearm and about a third of the personnel are active, war-hardened agents. Around 20% more are “baby,” agents and 17% are “retired,” which is just another way to say “too paranoid to be useful on an op,” or “took one too many bullets to the knee,” or in one case, “requested transfer to the interrogation taskforce on a permanent basis.”

None of these people are known to use particular prejudice when it comes to emptying magazines into enemy combatants entering their _safe space_ during _dinner time._

It had been messy.

“Need support, sir?” Barton had asked, hanging upside down out of a vent by the backs of his knees. He had smiled a particularly filthy little smile as his black T-shirt succumbed to gravity and fell down around his ribs. Coulson knew he was not the only one in the room distracted by Agent Barton’s angular hipbones, washboard abs, and obvious lack of undergarments.

“Eyes front,” he’d snapped at the mixed group of agents and support staff he’d managed to gather on a second floor conference room of the North-West tower of the Triskellion. All of whom tore their eyes away from Clint, his bow, and his abs with varying degrees of disappointment. He still had the fake eyelashes on from the Paris mission and that was just not fair to anybody. “Join us on the ground, please, Agent Barton, your tenure at the Circus has been over for six years in June,” Coulson was incredibly proud of the way his voice remained steady and commanding. Of course, there were an unknown number of hostiles directly below them, so this provided him with some of the much-needed motivation to keep it together.

Clint winked at him anyway, because he is incorrigible, before executing a showy flip that managed to replace the vent and land him upright in one fluid motion. This move was sexier than the show of skin by far. _Enemy assailants,_ Coulson reminded himself, _enemy assailants._

“Listen up,” he'd said, before concocting and laying out a containment plan like this was what he does for a living. Spoiler alert: it is, and he's damn good at it.

His team is armed to the teeth and ready to take back the North-West lobby in 14 minutes flat. An excellent response time.

The two of them are in the very middle of the disaster, as they are wont to be. Coulson spends his evening encouraging his agents into capturing and disarming or at least maiming rather than out-and-out execution. It takes all of Coulson’s hard-earned leadership skills; he has a fleeting thought to send a thank you letter to the Boy Scouts of America, but remembers that he sent his Eagle Scout award back in a snit about a decade ago.

Barton, meanwhile, could be seen popping in and out of the drop ceiling like a very deadly and backward version of Whack-a-Mole. Coulson feels the long-familiar combination of startled, proud, and terrified of Agent Barton’s unusual but nevertheless lethal skills.

They'd taken the building back within the hour.

But none of that, not the list, not the day’s excitement, not their weirdly domestic nighttime routine, really explains why Clint is currently hyperventilating and cursing in German (Clint does some of his best cursing in German) about the fact that none of the windows in Phil’s quarters-- in fact, none of the windows anywhere in this building-- open to the outside world. Phil should consider that to be a serious fire hazard, except he has six separate evacuation plans, and knows that number is below average.

“Scheisse, _scheisse,”_ he spits, shaking his head like a dog. “Sorry, sir,” he says after a moment.

Phil’s not sure exactly what will break Clint of his honorific habit, but now’s probably not the time to protest. In fact, he decides to go a little deeper into their field relationship, because that seems to be where Clint is right now, despite the fact that they’re both in their underwear.

“Talk to me, Barton.”

Phil knows that he’s accidentally done some operant conditioning with Clint that makes his response to that particular sentence a reflex. Then, Clint is rolling back into a sitting position one vertebra at a time. It’s like a magic key. To his knowledge (and that knowledge is quite extensive) Agent Barton has never once lied to him-- except perhaps that first day at the Circus, when he’d asked his age. Of course, even that was slightly suspect, since he’d apparently not known his own damn birthday until Phil’d tracked down his birth certificate.

“It’s just. Fuck. I’m tired and we’re all cozy, gonna get some sleep, then suddenly my heart’s going crazy and there's no air.” He puts a hand above his stomach and seems to force himself to breathe deeply. Phil can’t see his face, but from this angle it looks like it hurts.

Phil plants a hand on the small of Clint's back. He doesn't rub or knead, he just applies pressure. Enough to support, not enough to push.

"It's stupid," he says then, on a sigh.

"It probably isn't, but let's entertain the idea for a moment-- what's stupid?"

"Feelings," he says evasively, like a scared teenager. It's a strange thing, especially as the body before him is that of a medium-large, well-muscled man.

"The existence of feelings in general upsets you? Or are you having a specific supposedly stupid feeling?" Coddling is not his M.O., and Clint is unsurprised.

"Contradictory feelings." He explains, flopping backward expertly, so that his head lands in Phil's lap. He looks up at him with those wide grey-blue eyes and a look of absolute bafflement on his face, "I'm lying there and you're all up against me, which is great, by the way, I'm thinking damn, how many years did I waste sleeping by myself? But then, I feel like I really ought to run away. Up. Out. Away. Far and fast as I can, you know? I think, _open the window,_ but none of these damn windows open."

Coulson starts carding his hands through his hair. He is utterly unsurprised by that revelation. He is, however, a little surprised Clint has managed this long into their whatever-this-is without hiding in the vents. And right now he's actually letting Phil pet his head while he talks about feelings. Red letter day in Phil's book; progress.

"It's normal to feel more than one thing at once, you know that. Is it the sleeping that makes you nervous?"

He makes a little face, “I don’t think so. We sleep all the time. I think it’s more the space between, you know, right before. Bad shit happens when you’re not on the alert."

There's no mistaking the bitter tone and the little gasp that follows the admission. Clint isn't talking about taking sleep shifts on a op, he's talking about something else entirely. Something that makes Phil's fingers twitch for a weapon. It makes him want to track down each and every member of that damn circus and bring them in to be test subjects in Maria's advanced interrogation techniques class. He could be a guest lecturer. It'd be very educational.

"Do you want to tell me more about that?"

"Not in the least, sir,” he pauses, gives him a shy little smile, “Phil.”

Phil’s heart warms a bit at that and he smiles back down at Clint, running his thumb down his jaw. It would be easy right now to coax him back into bed, to let them both fall asleep after this ridiculous day, but Clint will never talk about this if he doesn’t push just a little, though, so he asks, “Does it have anything to do with... tennis?”

“With sex you mean?” Clint clarifies with a considering tilt of his head.

“Or why you think sex and tennis are the same thing," Phil offers, watching Clint's brow furrow and his fingers tense up.

“Well, not exactly the same. It's just easier that way, I promise," he seems to try for a reassuring smile, but he can't quite get there.

“Maybe it was," Phil concedes, "or it used to be, but it doesn’t seem to be doing you a lot of good now.”

“You think this is about sex?” he says, with a wide gesture that includes Phil, himself, the bed, and the stubborn window.

“No, I think this is about vulnerability and intimacy, which is tangled up in sex in a myriad of ways."

Clint makes a little noise indicating his distaste for that particular assertion. "It doesn't have to be, they can be separate."

"Maybe sometimes. People can have casual sex or honeypot ops or even perfunctory _we haven't done it in awhile I guess we ought to sex_ , but it can't always be completely separate. Not if you want to be in a relationship that involves both love and sex."

"I do want to go outside," Clint says suddenly, surging up from the bed.

Coulson winces, because, shit, that's on him. He said the L word to his somewhat imbalanced, almost definitely traumatized not-even boyfriend. Life choices.

"Wait," he calls out, "now probably isn't the best time to talk about it, anyway. Come back to bed." Clint freezes at the door, and Phil realizes he's given an order, and that's about the least fair thing he could do right now, so he adds on, "please?" letting some of his concern, his own fear of being alone, into his voice.

"It's just, it hurts less, this way," Clint says softly, his posture slumped even as his muscles are bunched all the way down to his calves. "If all of it was just a game, then it hurts less. If it's not a game, then-- then--"

"Then you have to deal with it."

"Yeah," he says shakily, still not turning around, "yeah. I just think it’s going to be kind of a shit-show. Don’t know if you’re up for it.” Phil hears the words left unsaid, _don’t know if I’m worth it._

“Well, I don’t know what you consider panic attacks and psychogenic shock, but it’s kind of already a shit-show, so we may as well make it worth it, don’t you think?”

Clint lets out a bark of a sound that might be laugh or a sob, or both at once.

“Also,” Phil muses, keeping his voice very light as he climbs out of bed and carefully approaches him, “I don’t know what I’ve ever done to make you believe I can’t handle a shit-show.”

Clint turns and sighs into him, wrapping his arms around his waist and burying his face in his neck. “Barcelona,” he mutters, with a faint, breathy laugh.

“They _drugged_ me, and they _took you_ , any shit-show related behavior on my part was somewhat excusable. I maintain that it was not my fault.”

“Quebec,” Clint counters, breathing the accented word into his ear as Phil works on steering them back to the bed.

“Oh, that was Sweetin’s fault, you know that.”

“Just testing,” he says mildly, now nibbling lightly on the sensitive skin of his neck. “Phil?”

The way Clint says his name always causes his breath to catch, so he mumbles, “hmm?”

“I can work on the whole... tennis thing. If you want. But, right now? Is it okay if we...?” he punctuates the sentence with a suggestive roll of his hips.

He wonders if it’s highly inappropriate to attempt to operate within Clint’s bizarre coping mechanism, or if he should try to hold out until they’ve got more of this settled. But Clint’s looking at him with his pupils blown wide and a feral little smile on his lips.

“Play a match?” he suggests, with a raised eyebrow and a small roll of his own hips.

“Is that what it’s called?” Clint asks, somewhat dazedly, and he leans in for a languid kiss.

Phil lets himself get lost there, for a moment, in the feeling of their bodies pressed together and Clint’s calloused hands running little circles on his back. When they break apart, he manages, “You really, _really_ don’t know anything about actual tennis, do you?”

“You wanna find out?” he asks in a low, dangerous voice. It’s a clear invitation, and Phil gives him a less-than-gentle shove back onto the mattress.

“Yes,” he says. And the window stays shut, at least for tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> This, like all the rest of my stuff, is un-beta'd so if you find a typo, spelling error or run on sentence (that isn't in Clint's dialogue, let's be real), please let me know, and I'll fix it. :)
> 
> There will be more installments of this series, yay! I thought only one, but hey, turns out I thought of more things to write about! :D


End file.
